The prior art presents various solutions and systems aimed in general at treating and gasifying drinking water, for example taken from the respective public water supply system.
Associating the taking of drinking water and its subsequent gasification with a cooling system having the function of appropriately cooling the water which has been taken is also known.
Now, in the current technical context as briefly illustrated above, the present invention sets the objective of bringing significant innovations and improvements, in particular as regards the system of cooling of the water which has been taken in order to be drunk and offered for consumption.
For this purpose, i.e. to create the cold conditions necessary for cooling the water, the present invention uses the physical phenomenon known as “Peltier effect” and more specifically, as described in detail here below, comprises a system of cooling, based in fact on the Peltier effect, which is characterised by an innovative unit, including and integrating a Peltier cell, also referred to by the acronym D.I.C.SY. (Direct Integrated Cooling System) which allows the overcoming and superseding of the yield limits of the current Peltier cells.
The Peltier effect, which takes its name from Jean Charles Athanase Peltier who discovered it in 1834, is a physical phenomenon, of thermoelectric nature, on the basis of which an electrical current, which passes through a zone of contact between two different metals or semiconductors, which therefore form a corresponding Peltier junction, produces a transfer of heat.
More particularly, according to the Peltier effect, referring to the circuit of FIG. 6A which schematises in fact this effect, when an electrical current I is made to pass through two different materials A and B in contact one with the other so as to form a first junction T1 and a second junction T2, it occurs that a certain quantity of heat is absorbed by the first junction T1 and a certain quantity of heat is emitted by the second junction T2, wherein the quantity of heat Q absorbed by the first junction T1 in the unit of time is defined by the following formula:Q=ΠAB*I=(ΠB−ΠA)*I, 
where ΠAB is the Peltier coefficient of the thermocouple, i.e. of the couple made up of two materials A and B in contact one with the other, while ΠA and ΠB are the Peltier coefficients of the single materials.
The semiconductors of type P usually have a positive Peltier coefficient, while those of type N have a negative Peltier coefficient.
A typical application in the art of the Peltier effect is the so-called Peltier cell, an example of which, denoted by 21, is shown for clarity in the photographic image of FIG. 6B.
As can be seen from the photographic image of FIG. 6B the Peltier cell 21 has the appearance of a thin plate, associated with two terminals or wires 21′ for the supply of an electrical current I, wherein one of the two opposite surfaces of the plate, denoted by 21a, or “hot” side of the Peltier cell, emits heat, while the other opposite surface, denoted by 21b, or “cold” side of the Peltier cell, absorbs it.
Therefore the Peltier cell, from the functional and operating aspect, is fundamentally a heat pump in the solid state, wherein the direction in which the heat is transferred depends on the direction of the electrical current I which is applied at its ends, i.e. at the two terminals 21′ of the plate which constitutes the Peltier cell.
Materially, referring to the schematic image of FIG. 6C, a common Peltier cell 21 is formed by a succession of two semiconductor materials, doped, of type N and of type P respectively, connected one to the other by an upper and lower lamella in copper.
If a positive voltage is applied to the material of type N and a negative voltage to the material of type P, the upper lamella, or “cold” side of the cell, cools, while the lower one, or “hot” side of the cell, heats.
By reversing the voltage applied to the ends of the cell also the direction of transfer of heat and thermal energy correspondingly changes direction and reverses. The Peltier cells, having to transfer heat from a cold zone to a hot zone, i.e.
create a difference of temperature, absorb necessarily, on the basis of the second principle of thermodynamics, a significant amount of force and energy in the form of electrical current.
In the art the Peltier cell is commonly used to remove heat, and for this purpose its cold side is fixed so as to adhere to the body or to the zone to be cooled.
In this way the heat removed from the zone to be cooled is transferred, together with the functioning heat which is the most part, from the cold side to the hot side of the Peltier cell, from where the heat has to be evacuated and transferred to the outside environment.
Unfortunately, the Peltier cells, despite the fact they have been improved in the course of the years, continue to be affected by a series of disadvantages and limits.
In particular, among these limits, mention is made of the fact that the yield of the current Peltier cells is all in all quite low, which entails and means that, in their functioning, a high quantity of energy is lost in the form of heat, with the consequent need to have to dispose of this heat produced by the cell.
In brief the current systems of cooling which use a Peltier cell are, at least in general terms, not very efficient, consume a great deal of energy and their yield is substantially low.
In practice it occurs that, with the current applications of Peltier cells for cooling a liquid, the systems for extracting heat from the hot side of the cell and transferring heat from the liquid which has to be cooled to the cold side of the cell are often much more expensive and complex than the cell itself.
Among the documents, reflecting the prior art, which relate to systems of cooling of a liquid, in particular water, which use the Peltier effect and therefore comprise a Peltier cell, mention is made of the following: U.S. Pat. No. 5,590,532; DE 19855214A1; WO2011/030339A2; WO99/37960A1.
In particular in the systems described by these documents the water is cooled indirectly, i.e. without making the liquid flow in direct contact with the Peltier cell, but making the liquid flow in a coil or heat exchanger simply adjacent or associated to the cold side of the Peltier cell.
Moreover, in the prior art, in order to dispose of the heat produced by the Peltier cell and avoid its overheating, systems of cooling with forced air of low efficiency are usually used, or heat sinks are used, with circulation of liquid, in which the liquid flows inside the sink and not in direct contact with the Peltier cell, therefore such as to involve a low yield.
The cooling systems of the so-called heat pipe type are also found to be useless and unsuitable, in that the efficiency and the yield of these systems in transferring heat are always lower than those of the cell in producing heat for disposal.
As will be made clearer by the continuation of the description, among the objectives of the present invention there is also that of overcoming the limits and going beyond the low yield, such as those illustrated above, of the current systems of cooling that are based on the Peltier effect and therefore use Peltier cells, and to propose therefore a new apparatus or system of cooling, in particular of drinking water taken from the respective public system, wherein the Peltier effect and the corresponding Peltier cell are used in an efficient and decidedly innovative way, as also verified and confirmed by experimental data, with respect to known systems.